Gondar, the metropolis of Abyssinia, is situated upon a hill of considerable height, the top of it nearly plain, on which the town is placed. It consists of about ten thousand families in times of peace; the houses are chiefly of clay, the roofs thatched in the form of cones, which is always the construction within the tropical rains. On the west end of the town is the king’s house, formerly a structure of considerable consequence; it was a square building, flanked with square towers; it was formerly four storeys high, and, from the top of it, had a magnificent view of all the country southward to the lake Tzana. Great part of this house is now in ruins, having been burnt at different times; but there is still ample lodging in the two lowest floors of it, the audience-chamber being above one hundred and twenty feet long. A succession of kings have built apartments by the side of it of clay only, in the manner and fashion of their own country; for the palace itself was built by masons from India, in the time of Facilidas, and by such Abyssinians as had been instructed in architecture by the Jesuits without embracing their religion, and after remained in the country, unconnected with the expulsion of the Portuguese, during this prince’s reign. The palace, and all its contiguous buildings, are surrounded by a substantial stone wall thirty feet high, with battlements upon the outer wall, and a parapet roof between the outer and inner, by which you can go along the whole and look into the street. There appears to have never been any embrasures for cannon, and the four sides of this wall are above an English mile and a half in length. The mountain, or hill, on which the town is situated, is surrounded on every side by a deep valley, which has three outlets; the one to the south to Dembea, Maitsha, and the Agows; the second to the north-west towards Sennaar, over the high mountain Debra Tzai, or the Mountain of the Sun, at the root of which Koscam, the palace of the Iteghé, is situated, and the low countries of Walkayt and Waldubba; the third is to the north to Woggora, over the high mountain Lamalmon, and so on through Tigré to the Red Sea. The river Kahha, coming from the Mountain of the Sun, or Debra Tzai, runs through the valley, and covers all the south of the town; the Angrab, falling from Woggora, surrounds it on the N. N. E. These rivers join at the bottom of the hill, about a quarter of a mile south of the town.